What we were and what we are
by Spirit of dawn
Summary: Enjonine through the ages: A collection of German History AU one-shots: Variations on a theme of Enjonine First story: The Scouring of Magdeburg; 1631


**Enjonine through the ages - German history AUs.**

**Following a few discussions, and inspired by the fantastic phillipine history AUs from youarethesentinels, I will try to compile a few german history AUs as variations on a motive of Enjonine.**

**As a first one, I am moving to Magdeburg, to the year 1631, where one of the most devastating, desastrous and scarring battles of the Thirty Years' war. I have tried to do my research. I hope it's half believable.**

**The title is of course an hommage to the novel "Mother Courage" which deals with a woman who travels with the soldiers during that Thirty Years' war...**

**So:**

* * *

**What we were and what we are: Mademoiselle Courage**

* * *

**2****nd**** of May, 1629, In front of the city of Magdeburg**

**Midday**

People say that the coming of spring heralds a new beginning. With the first blossoms, they say, everything starts anew, and another story begins. The world takes a fresh breath and chases away the ghosts of the winter past, and with it, all its fears.

In spring, everything starts growing again.

Calves are being born. Seeds are sown. Birds return.

Armies march.

What a load of nonsense.

Come May, and we are still in front of the walls of this accursed city. After a winter of freezing in drafty huts and even colder tents, a winter of little to no booty, waiting for battles that didn't happen.

In February, we started camping near the river, a crowd, that is almost a city, almost a town, but there is the smell of gunpowder, day and night, and the rattle of sabers with the step of every man.

We should have stayed in France.

This was my father's idea, of course.

Four years ago, when we lost the inn that had been home to all of us for as long as I can remember, he turned east to seek our fortune, and what a wretched fortune it was he sought.

For in the east, there was war. Armies were being assembled. A madman called Wallenstein had claimed he could lead fifty thousand into battle, and even though it never came to that there was ample opportunity to sell one's sword arm, or, lacking one, to sell oneself to those possessing one. And we are now part of his non-fifty thousand.

What had been an inn in the days of my childhood became now a wagon with barrels, and merchant customers, who had taken seats at our tables turned into soldiers, sitting on the floor around the cart while my father gave beer for coin and looked as if nothing had changed.

So we marched north against Denmark, almost got between enemy lines at Stralsund, and turned southeast again, running around in circles, saw Halle, Prague, Regensburg and Nuremberg until, at last, we found ourselves here, and here we seemed to be to stay.

I have seen much more of these foreign lands than I have of my own, and much more than I would have cared to.

In this army, no one can afford to be useless.

It is the war that feeds us, and we eat what we can steal, beg, earn or scavenge. Like the locusts in the bible, we wander through fields and towns and when we leave, there is nothing left for those who remain. That's why we are here. Magdeburg is rich.

The high-and-mighty have their own reasons, I presume, but I, we, all of those I know are here because of what is stored, what is hidden behind these walls. It's as simple as that. Tribute or force. These are the rules of our generalissimus.

I have learned to plunder.

I have learned to take the clothes of a dead man.

And that of one dying.

I have learned to curse in three languages and haggle in four.

I have ducked under musket fire, slept in the snow, feasted like a princess and hungered like the beggar I am.

I have done what it takes.

I am a baggage girl.

We should never have left France, I say.

But for that, it is long too late.

* * *

**2****nd**** of May, 1629, In front of the city of Magdeburg**

**Evening**

This army at our gates is a curse.

For three months they have been gathering in front of the city, sealing off roads and river, scavenging and plundering and soiling fields and meadows like a plague, an instrument of darkness and villainy in the hands of a majesty, who calls himself in gods graces and yet seems to have lost his way.

I pass through the army wondering how someone, anyone, would want to live that way; in tents and wagons and provisory huts, sleeping on the cold floor and doing nothing but slaughter at another's bidding. It seems a waste of life, I think, and a waste of energy; but follies have ever been committed for faith and money, and the flag of this army is colored by both.

There is an air of Babylon in the crowd that we pass through unhindered, voices in all tongues of the earth, it seems, and with few steps I discern Czech and Polish, German and French, English and Danish, and others I do not recognize quite as easily.

Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, I remember the book of revelations, the description of the ultimate downfall, the end of the world, and the thought makes me shudder and pause unbidden.

I let my gaze wander around, at the soldiers following the drills of their captain on a field nearby. Stew is cooked in enormous cauldrons over a fire, and a few paces off, someone is roasting a pig.

A spindly, small, ageing man is giving out beer from a small, crooked wagon, to a few soldiers off-duty. Two skinny girls, scrawny, tattered things, are helping, passing around the cups. One of them, her dark, long hair tangled to a single mat, allows herself to be drawn into the lap of one of the customers, and her laugh is shrill and loud.

I am not sure what catches my eye. It may be the well-bred disgust of a righteous man; this army is a world without rights and breeds its own laws and crimes at will; or a vain curiosity unbefitting of me, or another reason that does not show itself so easily.

He tickles her and she laughs and squirms, and as she moves, her eyes catch mine for a moment, dark between the brown strands.

For a moment she halts, maybe curious, maybe shameful, but then she cocks a brow and her face contorts in a sneer.

And I have to turn away, because I cannot give her a reason for my interest, and somehow I am sure she would demand one, given the chance.

It is convenient that my father and the other two members of the council are a few paces off already, and I have to hurry to catch up with them.

This is the first time I am asked to join the negotiations. I am being watched, and I know it.

We enter the tent, and the Generalissimus is nothing like what I expected. Believing rumors, I have been given to expect a brute, raw, a peasant almost, cruel and merciless. But the man that receives us knows how to charm, and he would make it easy to be believed.

I have to remind myself, standing in front of Wallenstein as he makes promises of safety for our cooperation and payment, that I am facing the man who has beaten down Christian of Denmark, who has turned coats in Bohemia, and who is the dog on the leech that the Kaiser is holding. He is the tool of papism, sent to beat down the spirit of Luther. A man who believes in omens, specters and charlatans himself. There is irony in this.

He is not to be trusted, this I know.

He has no means of keeping the promises he makes. We know it, and I suspect he knows it too. And so we part as we met – him besieging us for the tribute we can and will not pay, and we with the promise of looking to the Swedish for protection, should he be unwilling to grant it.

We were free to come and are free to leave again, and on the outskirts of the camp, surprisingly I meet the girl again, as if she had waited for me.

"No success, moneybag boy?" she asks with insolence and a twinkle in her eye. There is an accent in her voice – French, I think – but otherwise her German is unflawed, even if her words are grating.

"What is it to you?" I find myself answering, falling back behind the members of the council once more for her sake, and she snorts in amusement.

"I'm bored", she says. "And fed up with camping at the city gates."

I shrug.

"You're no soldier", I inform her drily. "Shouldn't you be free to leave?"

There is the slightest hesitation before she answers, all sneer and amusement again.

"You have no idea, moneybag boy. Where would I leave to? And with this beautiful rich city in front of us, on top of it."

Her insolence is grating, and I will not have her speak lightly of these things.

"Magdeburg will not fall", I inform her angrily, and now she laughs and jumps of the rock she is sitting on, bare feet sinking into the mud that covers the floor.

"You keep telling yourself that", she answers and finds the audacity to clap my shoulder – I later check and half imagine to see dirty fingerprints there – before she strolls past me, merry as a lark and just as unconcerned, and the hustle of the army camp swallows her whole.

* * *

**April 20****th****, 1631, in front of the city of Magdeburg**

**Morning**

Two years have come and gone, and we're back in front of the city. It is a strange feeling, like remembering a dream, or another life.

We had left Magdeburg to its own devices in September and started to move across the country again. The Kaiser had lost patience with his dog-on-a-leash, and his Generalissimus had been sent home to Friedland, being replaced by a man called Tilly, who is less capricious, but also, ultimately, less cautious.

And the aimless, senseless wandering continued.

We lost Azelma in winter, when food was scarce and she fell ill, coughing and fevering for two weeks before the end came swiftly and mercilessly, and mother followed her a month after, lingering longer and suffering more.

From then on, it was just father and me. And of course, nothing turned for the better.

We are all turning into animals, one by one, some faster, some more slowly, and war makes beasts of us all.

It was a relatively peaceful summer and we were near Nuremberg again when word flew like fire through the camp that the Swedish king had landed at the northern coast, and that all the provinces there quickly bowed to his rule.

And of course, again we marched.

A year later found us in front of the accursed city again, and as I stared up at the walls, I wondered if they, too, had the impression that everything had changed in these two years. That hell was impending, and mercilessly closing in.

I wondered, what had happened to the bright boy who had followed the men from the city council into the tent of the Generalissimus, and if he had had the sense to leave the city while he could. Somehow, though, I doubted it. Purity and foolishness are bedfellows often, and why should it be any different in this case?

War will break them all the same. It happens to all of us, in the end.

He had been a peculiar sort, but maybe already then I had forgotten how it was to be innocent, and so maybe this had been what had caught my eye about him. Innocence did not exist in the Kaiser's army.

He was a lamb, two years ago.

And once more, the city was led on its way to slaughter.

* * *

**Magdeburg, May 2****nd****, 1631**

**Nightfall**

They are training even at night. One has to admire their diligence.

It is easy to grow lax behind the thick walls of the city, protected by stone and water. Standing up here, above the Elbtor, the army seems very far away.

This is deceptive, of course. A musket's shot may fly far, almost as far as a gaze may reach, and I can see them well enough, all the campfires that have become our constant companions.

We will not yield.

I will not yield.

Magdeburg has faced sieges before and lived. Our walls are strong, our hearts are steady.

The spirit of the city is burning like the brightest flame, the hope of a clearer, nearer god, a god of the people who will not resort to riches and the false preachings and notions of a pope.

We are the heirs of Luther. We do not bow to papism.

I make my way through the training citizens towards the stout, lone figure at the head of the line. I am greeted, as I pass them, and I return – curtly, for time is a fickle thing these days. Yet, I am nothing if they chose so.

I know some are doubting the wisdom of my choice. And yet, the citizens have always chosen their leaders themselves, and after the father fell to Ferdinand's muskets a month ago in Pappenheim, they called the son to take his place.

I have cried my tears and said my prayers. Now, there is time for battle.

Soderberg waits for me near the wall, a stout man half a head smaller than myself. He is as stern as northern winter, and rightfully so, for he is a man of the Swedish king, come here together with Falkenberg, his officer and commander as a pawn for Gustav Adolf to keep his word.

"Will they hold?" I ask, and Soderberg presses together his lips, frowning at the men who are loading muskets with growing ease, powder, bullet, and then shot.

"For a while", he answered, flexing his fingers "Let us wish Godspeed to the king." He is worried, there is no need for words to explain this to me, and likewise there is no need to say which king he means.

Gustav Adolf is somewhere between Frankfurt and here, Falkenberg has said, and he may be here tomorrow already.

Until then, we are on our own.

I let my gaze wander over the drilling citizens, discerning familiar faces among them. The bravest of the brave, the truest of the true. I have been blessed with extraordinary friends, and they joined the city defense without so much as a blink of hesitation. Jan raises his head and smiles, in the most peculiar way. Even he, poet soul that he is, is following the call of the guns.

When the life of the city is at stake, none of us can go back.

And yet they all look to me.

"What about you?" Soderberg asks, all of a sudden, and when I turn I see a questioning gaze that I know he is capable of. It is not the first time I receive it – the first one was following my election, but apparently then I did pass some unspoken test and was allowed to continue.

I do not blink.

"I know my place", I answer and that is all that there is to say. Soderberg nods.

"Then it is in God's hand and in his hands alone."

"As are all things", I reply. We are the sons of Luther. We shall not fall.

"As are all things."

* * *

**May 19****th****, 1631, in front of the city of Magdeburg**

**Late afternoon**

I let him sleep in the tent and leave, closing the flap behind him as not to wake him.

He is not the worst of them.

A scoundrel and a never-do-well, but he is capable of gentleness, and that is a rare thing nowadays. I have learnt to count my blessings when I can, and as long as his favor is with me I may retain that small piece of liberty that I had thought lost already.

This army is a beast.

Three months come and gone we are in front of the city, and boredom, anger and fear of the impending baffle turns men into animals, and one fire is lighting another.

Order is maintained as well as they can, but there is no one to protect someone like me unless I provide for it myself.

Eat or be eaten. That's how the army works without a foe. And that's why I allowed Montparnasse into my tent.

He is French as I am and that is a remnant of familiarity, probably the last inkling of a home that I have left.

I am under no illusions. There is little enough that I was able to hide from the desperate wish and need to survive, and the little shreds have to be cherished.

I wander through the camp aimlessly – at this time of the day, there is often repose, the day's work done already, but the night's frenzy not yet begun. Apart from the first hours of light, this is the safest time for someone like me, and I feel like walking. There is a first hint of summer in the air, and I realize I would not have thought that summer would ever come again. I have been cold too long.

I turn towards the outskirts of the camp, passing the posts that someone has placed there and that are, if I am honest, not very watchful. If I wanted to sneak past them – in either direction – I could. But boredom is never a good master of a soldier.

And then there is nothing between me and the city walls. The gates are closed, and the stone seems insurmountable. Dimly, I can see sentries atop the walls, but I am too far for a gunshot. I have learnt quickly how far a bullet can reach, and those who didn't, didn't live long enough to know their mistake.

For now, there is no battle yet.

Some shuffling and words behind me get my attention and I turn at the hustle only to see a small group of richly dressed men leave our camp, engaging already in heavy discussions and arguments, hands flaying, steps hurrying.

He is among them and I freeze.

Time has been kinder on him than on me, but it has left marks on us all and when he stops and stares at me in a mixture of surprise and anger, there is little innocence left in his eyes. And somehow, this thought saddens me.

He stops and the others continue without him, engrossed in their discussion as he takes a few steps towards me, clear blue eyes unreadable but stern.

"You are back", and it is clear that this realization is not a happy one.

I, however, marvel at the fact that he has remembered me, and so all I manage is a nod.

"Why?" he continues, crossing his arms as his gaze quickly darts to the army behind me and then back to my face. And I do not know why I am honest.

"Because there is nothing else left for me to do."

He presses together his lips and nods.

"I suppose that goes for all of us."

There is a remnant of idealism in his eyes, and it surprises me how he could have kept that during the darkness of this war. I had thought that all heroes were dead.

"You could have left if you wanted, couldn't you?" I continue, even though I know the answer already. Here is one who has not sold all his principles to the idols of gold and survival. Here is one who remembers why this whole sorry mess began.

Here is one who will die for it. At the gates of this city or somewhere else. I feel as if I am talking to a ghost already.

He does not dignify my comment with an answer, just with a glare and I do not press. I understand anyhow.

"Yes", I answer instead and shrug. "That's how it is, hm?"

He frowns and answers in a way I would never have expected him to.

"What happened to you?" he asks, and there is a sadness in his voice that I do not understand and that reaches to me in a way no word or phrase has done in a long while.

I do not understand why he sees, and I am looking for words, fumbling, starting twice in taking a deep breath but finally I realize I have nothing to answer to his perceptiveness.

He passes a weary hand in front of his eyes and nods.

"War", he says, and I realize that this is all that needs to be said.

I nod in response.

"War."

* * *

**May 20****th****, 1631, Magdeburg, City hall**

**Before daybreak**

"Have you seen the numbers out there?" Harenhall's voice is almost tipping as he screams at the assembly. He is afraid. We all are. But some are dealing in a better way than others. "Tilly's offer is not so bad. And it would spare the city. If this mob is coming down on us, there will be no holding of the walls."

"Patience." Falkenberg's voice is calm as always. He is commanding our troops, much more experienced in the ways of war than us merchants, and now his manner is beseeching. "I have it on good authority that the king is barely two days from here. We just have to hold out a little more."

"On good authority!" Old Jansen snarls, shaking his white mane. „The city is closed off. How can you get intelligence there."

„I came into this city during a siege", Falkenberg reminds him. "Believe me if I tell you there are ways."

"And we will not give all our riches to the papist devils", answers Father Antonius, slamming his hands onto the table. "This city is a protestant one and must remain so, lest we commit a crime against the divine majesty and the spirit of reformation!"

Tilly has given us another offer; a final one as he said, but there have been many final offers and each of them has become worse than the other. If we keep this up, with a few more negotiations, we will be allowed to leave with nothing more than the clothes on our back.

We are not far from that already.

Unconditional surrender. Disbanding of Militia. Vows of fealty. Sons of the city in the Kaiser's army. Tribute. Enormous Tribute.

The army of the Kaiser is hungry and needs to be fed.

I would wish there were a way to spare those who want no part in the fighting. But I am bereft of that option, we all are. We will fall and triumph together, the city as one.

It's not the worst of things.

The arguments are flying across the table, and the discussion is colored with many things; faith and anger and pride, fear and hope, trust and panic.

But all I can see are the dark eyes of the devastated girl in front of me. I have stared into the face of the specters that this war breeds, and I have finally understood.

This is what we are becoming. All of us. Mere ghosts, shadows of ourselves. We started out with the word of God on our lips and end up animals driven by instinct only, the need for survival chasing away pride and purity, dignity and faith, until there is nothing left but the barest remnant of a human being.

This is what awaits all of us behind the door that we are to pass, with or without the Swedish, victorious or vanquished. In the end, war will make us all its own and turn it into creatures of destruction.

I can and will not yield.

The fight against the army outside our walls is insignificant. The real fight is fought within, every man against his instincts, every human being against the chaos.

We must remain what we were, stay true to our faith. The moment we bow everything to the wish of survival, we join the faceless specters outside the walls and become like them.

However the fight about the city will go, this is the fight I cannot lose.

I am thankful to the specter outside the wall for this revelation, if nothing else.

A vote comes up, and capitulation is decided.

But it is too late.

Gunshots outside our walls.

Gunshots inside.

The storm has begun.

God be with us all.

* * *

**May 20****th****, 1631, Magdeburg, City hall**

**Before daybreak**

They left the camp with the first light, and stormed the walls without mercy.

I am sitting on our wagon in the strangely silent, strangely normal camp – all the soldiers are gone but the rest of us is still here – and watch the fight in the distance.

The city does not stand a chance. We are just too many.

"Jesus Maria", they cry, the words tumbling from thousands of lips, a cry for courage in the face of death.

Many lose their lives climbing the walls.

But we are just too many.

I try to discern a flash of gold on the city walls and wonder if he is there somewhere, defending his city with the last remnants of his innocence.

Somehow I wish he would survive, if only as a reminder that there is something good to be had.

But I have seen death in his eyes already.

It is early afternoon when the cry comes. The city is taken. The city is fallen.

Now the real war begins.

There is a certain sense of timing that has to be obeyed in the art of plunder. Too early, and you will fall upon heavy fighting still, risk being torn apart by stray bullets. Too late, and there will be nothing left.

I feel courageous even if my father does not and we are among the first who follow the army into the city and walk into the fire.

* * *

**May 20****th****, 1631, Magdeburg**

**Nightfall**

It is over. Almost over.

We are dead men walking, building a provisoric castle somewhere in the oldest part of the city, and this we defend to the bitter end.

I have spoken to my friends and they share my opinion. The general has offered free passage for those who pay a tribute – money again – but I will remain true to myself.

I say goodbye to the sinking sun, knowing I will never see it again in this life.

There are bullets flying all around me and the city is burning. The sound of screaming and wrecking is everywhere.

The city has fallen and we will die.

The world has retreated into simplicities again. There is something calming within that thought.

* * *

**May 20****th****, 1631, Magdeburg**

**Night**

I should have known better.

The city is hell, a burning hell full of stench and screams, and slowly the streets are filling with the blood if those falling prey to the frenzy.

The soldiers and citizens look all alike through smoke and flames, and I am very well aware of the danger I am in.

Those who have never done it think plundering is easy. They forget, that in a city fallen frontlines blur, and there is nothing to distinguish me from a poor washerwoman of Magdeburg, and nothing to save me from sharing their fate. Sometimes they believe the pleading, vows or prayers, but one does well not to rely on this.

In the frenzy, there is no telling of what would happen.

The bag on my back is already well filled – I have found some money, a new dress and a set of silverware from a house – and I slip through the streets as unseen as I can.

I have seen many plunders by now, but this one is the worst. I lose count of the men I see dragging after them a screaming woman, of the grunts I can hear from alleys and alcoves. There will be no virgins left in Magdeburg tomorrow, I am sure.

I lose count on the number of bodies, run past a boy bleeding from mouth and nose, stretching out his hands to me begging for mercy, shove aside a girl my age clinging to me in desperation.

I have no time for this. I am a baggage girl and I have to plunder what will sustain me for the next weeks and months.

I cannot afford pity.

We have waited for so long for this, and this is water after a long draught, or bread after starvation. General Tilly has given us three days to scourge the city, and I am sure we will make the best of it.

Living has become all that is left to me.

For a long time my luck holds, and the few that take notice of me realize what I am doing and believe me one of them.

But there is an end to everything.

They are five, and they are closing in on me.

Italians, from their language, but it is of no matter, they could be anyone. They try to grab me, but I am not alive until now for nothing and I am fast and run, run, through burning streets and push through panicked crowds. I clutch my bag to me because it is all I have, and in the end there are only two who still pursue me as I chase through the fighting in the streets.

I barely realize where I am running, knowing that my life is now depending on the swiftness of my feet alone, but I can feel my strength waning, and theirs is fuelled by desire, and anger and triumph.

A gunshot, and I duck, before another one follows, but as I check my limbs I realize that I am still largely unharmed.

For a moment, there is silence.

And then, as I look around, I realize that I am standing in front of an improvised barricade, and upon it, looking dirty and bloodied, exhausted and a hundred years older than a day ago, is standing the boy from the city who came to our camp twice to refuse surrender.

Life, it seems, is running in circles.

* * *

**May 21****th****, 1631, Magdeburg**

**Night**

"You should not stay here", I say, involuntarily, as the fighting momentarily slows and I leave Jan and Mark standing on the barricade, watching out so that no one at least may creep upon us unnoticed.

We may be intent on dying, but we still want to sell our lives as dearly as possible.  
We have some pride left.

She shrugs, sitting next to her wearing the scars of her own battle, smoke clings to her hair and blood clings to her dress. She is skin and bones, but I have seen her move and run.

Animals are most dangerous right before their dead.

"Why?" she asks.

"Because this is a trap", I explain, although I suspect she knows. "We will not leave this alive."

She turns her head to look at me, and her eyes are dark, almost black and surprisingly human.

"I see", she says, obviously meaning 'I know'.

"You will die if you stay here", I rephrase and again she shrugs, her fingers picking at the frayed seam of her skirt.

"I have died a long time ago", she answers neutrally, and I have no idea how to answer to that.

And yet, looking at her, I see what I would become if I would leave this city now; if I were seeking a route to escape instead of going up in flames.

What I am will die here. This is certainty whatever I do.

I barely realize that silence has settled between us. She seems so calm, so very, very calm. I do not know how she creates this moment of peace around us, but it is a small wonder at the end of things.

"Why did you refuse?" she asks, and I almost feel compelled to laugh.

"We didn't", I answer. "The vote came out for capitulation. You were just a little too early."

The irony in this is remarkable.

She makes a dismissive move of her hand and shakes her head.

"But you did", she said and I wonder why she doesn't need to ask. "So why?"

I am looking for the words to explain it to her, and finally I decide that this moment does not require delicacy.

"Because of you", I voice the truth that I have never even allowed myself to think before.

This surprises her and she turns to watch me fully, crossing her legs as she sits next to him.

"What?" It sounds almost angry.

"There is no place left in this war for goodness", he answers. "There is no place for ideals. And there is no place for me. You have shown me what this war does."

She frowns, but he continues, words spilling forth unthought. This is truth, he thinks, and the relief is immediate.

"There is no way out of here for me. If I am to die I want to do it as myself."

She is silent at that and for a moment I see something in her eyes that I had not thought her capable of. For a moment, he is given a glimpse of a girl from France, lost in this great trek through Europe, a girl who has laughed and lived and dreamt.

Long ago.

She blinks away the tears reflexively.

„Can I stay?"

The question is very sudden, and for a moment I am unsure how to answer, but finally I decide to take a leaf out of her book.

"Why?"

"Because you are right" she answers, and finally I understand.

* * *

**May 21****th****, 1631, Magdeburg**

**Dawn**

He gets to see the sunrise.

As he watches the sky turn a pale green, and then blue there is a final sense of wonder in his eyes. For a moment, he is just a boy, and he remembers how he has been and how he wants to be, and in his eyes I find an echo of what I once was and had almost forgotten.

I could not turn back now if I wanted to. Where would I go?

This is where I belong.

They have given me a musket, and I have seen soldiers loading it so often that it is easy to me, but we know that once they come in force we will not stand.

But we go on our own terms.

Finally, the general's soldiers remember that they have forgotten a group of boys, somewhere in the middle of town. As they march closer, his eyes meet mine again; blue, so blue, and we are calm.

"So this is you", he says, and I nod.

He smiles, for the first and last time, and for a moment he closes in, a hand on my cheek.

I have received many kisses by many men, on my own terms as well as theirs, but this is the one that burns away the others, because he has seen me, and in that he is unique.

Parting, he looks at me, serious again, but I understand none the less.

"And this is you", I answer.

He nods.

"God does not care about the way man sees him."

I understand. Protestant and Catholic, in the end we will all be the same.

"I will see you on the other side, moneybag boy", I say, and this is the end to the war of faith, here, in a burning street with the soldiers approaching, for they will bring another battle, one, that does not care for religion, or faith, or dreams.

And the rest, as they say, is history.


End file.
